


I have been looking for a lover (but I have not found him yet)

by Ryenan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, College, Eye Trauma, M/M, Steter Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21908311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryenan/pseuds/Ryenan
Summary: Soulmates AU, where your eyes match their hair and vice versa. But what happens when your soulmate is burned near-to-death in a house fire? And what happens when said soulmate is a werewolf, who heals a "little" differently than anything you've ever known?
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 4
Kudos: 194





	I have been looking for a lover (but I have not found him yet)

Stiles is thirteen, with huge, honey-amber colored eyes, the day he goes blind. The light hue of his eyes darkens to a sickly, seared red one afternoon, with a white-hot pain that seems to bleed from his eyes into every muscle, every inch of skin. This isn’t supposed to happen, he knows, he shouldn’t be in pain – When Scott’s soulmate got pink streaks in her hair, the streaks showed up in his irises without even a haze to tint his vision.

He’s at home, but isn’t alone, for once – his dad was on a week of morning to midday shifts, so he could canvas and campaign in the evenings. Still, Stiles doesn’t scream, yell out for him. He remembers his mother, always screaming, and doesn’t want to scare his father, give him any reason to drink this close to the election.

Stiles carefully, painfully, levers himself off the floor, abandoning his homework and the book he abandoned the homework for. Everything is blurry and darker than it should be, but he makes it to the doorframe easily enough.

The pain, and the fear of falling down the stairs, pushes him to all fours. He gently pads forward, wrists and knees screaming, to the edge of the stairs. He inches down them, blind to their shape, blind to everything but the faint light from the wall sconces.

“Stiles? What are you –“

Stiles hadn’t heard his dad approach, can’t tell where he is by voice alone, but throws a hand out towards the bottom of the stairs, searching, all the same.

“Dad,” He says, voice cracking with a sob. It feels like his face, his eyes, are on fire, and he can’t keep the pain out of his voice.

He hears his father run to him, the clatter of something forgotten dropping from his hands, and feels the warmth of strong arms and calloused fingers on his cheeks, his forehead, his back, as his father lifts him, bolts for the car.

He doesn’t see him do any of these things. He doesn’t see him again.

Six years later, and Stiles is in his second semester of college. These last seven months have been just long enough for him to master the section of campus his classes are confined to, the vast lecture halls and cramped computer labs, and make friends among the absolutely massive student population.

UC Berkley is so large that his freshman comp lecture has more people than his high school graduating class, and they cram into a double tiered lecture hall late every Tuesday and Thursday evening.

Stiles swings his cane before his feet with little forward tics, wary of laptop cords strung across the stairs, as he makes his way down to the second row. It’s nice to sit close to the lecturer, hear the sighs and stutters, the way they tap pens or ruffle their clothes as they talk.

They’re discussing John Milton, the endless poem he wrote on what he perceived to be the fallibility of soulmates. The professor, married, bonded, is derisive of Milton’s disillusionment, but Stiles is not.

Milton, blinded when his wife and soulmate lost her hair, and skin, and wits, to a great flame.

Stiles, blinded by who knows what great tragedy. He’d never met his soulmate, and the date of his blindness hadn’t turned up any clues, when compared to reports of accidents and tragedies around the world.

Milton never regained all his sight, even after his wife had passed. Stiles fears he will not regain his sight, even if he finds out his soulmate has died, for pain of that love lost.

Thirty minutes into the lecture and most of the students are starting to get restless. There’s an uptick in the soft background sounds of the class, but Stiles barely notices, too engrossed in his own…problems.

There’s light, picking at the edges of his not-vision, and the blur is spreading, resolutely, even as he tries to blink it away.

His sight is back. And it isn’t coming back slowly, like his soulmate had finally started to heal. Or instantly, as if they were dead. It was coming back fast, but patchy. It was coming back wrong. He stares into the swirly, unfocused mess for the rest of class, and doesn’t take any notes.

Stiles shuts his eyes to navigate out of the lecture hall.

He remembers what it was like to see, before, and knows this isn’t it. There are still black streaks across his vision the next morning, and everything is miserably hazy. As much as he loathes to admit it, he needs help. (He had hoped it was a trick of his imagination, that he’d wake up back in the familiar darkness of the last six years.)

“Dad? Don’t freak out. I’m headed to the doctor right now.”

“What’s happened? Stiles? Do I – “

“No, you don’t need to come! It’s okay. Probably. Dad, my vision – “

“Oh G-d, Stiles, I’m so sorry – “

“No!” He cries again, cutting his dad off. How hard is it to get someone to freaking listen? “They’re not dead, probably, I can’t see. There’s just a little blurriness. Some light again.”

“You can see?” His father’s voice almost breaks across the words, and Stiles can hear the pain in the words.

“Only a little. But it keeps changing. I’ll let you know what the doctor says, okay?”

“Stiles – “

“Gotta go, bus is here. Love you!”

His desk phone is ringing as soon as he puts his cell down.

“Sheriff Stilinski speaking.”

“Sheriff, Peter Hale has woken up. Thought you’d want to know.”


End file.
